Artist’s conception of the Venera-D spacecraft in orbit around Venus. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Last week, AmericaSpace reported on why NASA should return to Venus, and new technology being developed to help make that happen, especially as in longer-lived landers or rovers. With its extremely hostile conditions, Venus has been much less of a priority […]

Fueling IXV: “The IXV Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle is being prepared for launch at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. IXV will be launched 320 km into space on top of a Vega rocket, climbing up to 420 km before beginning a long glide back through the atmosphere. In the process, IXV will gather data […]

From the European Space Agency (ESA): “[The IXV] will be launched by ESA in 2014 on Vega, Europe’s new small launcher, into a suborbital path, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. After being launched into space, IXV will return to Earth as if from a low-orbit mission, testing brand-new European atmospheric reentry technologies during […]

After many delays, the European Space Agency (ESA) is ready to launch its ambitious Gaia mission to observe and catalog around 1 billion astronomical objects—or approximately 1 percent of the entire population of our Milky Way Galaxy—on Thursday, 19 December. Liftoff of the $1.2 billion […]

The cryotechnic main stage and its French-built Vulcain-2 engine are raised to the vertical in the Launcher Integration Building (BIL) at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. Launch of Flight VA-216 is scheduled for mid-December. Photo Credit: CNES/Arianespace

It has been a busy year for Arianespace—the French-led launch services organization, which operates […]

Following Friday’s scrubbed launch attempt, due to high winds at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, Arianespace has successfully launched its second Vega lightweight booster to deploy three satellites into two […]

The European Arianespace organization is ready to launch its second Vega lightweight rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, late Friday evening. The 98-foot-tall, four-stage vehicle will carry three payloads—including Estonia’s first […]

This is an artist’s rendering of the debris belt around the star Vega. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists working with data from both NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory have confirmed the detection of an asteroid-belt-like debris belt around the nearby star Vega.